


Monsters In The Grass

by Philosophizes



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: I think that's everyone important, Lots and lots of references to Ancient Nations, Magic, Multi, Prairie AU, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette on The Shoed Unicorn, the best-defended settlement on the prairie in a world of dangerous magic. </p>
<p>Written for budgeridoo's deep need for Prairie AUs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters In The Grass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [budgeridoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/budgeridoo/gifts).



The Shoed Unicorn was actually the name of the tavern, not the settlement.

But the tavern was the only true fortification for hundreds of miles around, and the best-protected stop on the river routes, so the complex of buildings attached to the tavern (or perhaps the forge that had a complex of buildings attached to it including the tavern) was collectively called The Shoed Unicorn. No one was really sure what the original name was supposed to have been- that knowledge died with the man everyone remembered as Theudericks, the first Forgemaster, who’d actually shod the unicorn the tavern’s name referred to.

The rest of the herd had gored him for his daring, later.

But in the time before that the shod unicorn mare had born enough foals to be collared in iron and killed as yearlings to make the bone windpipes that covered the entire area in airy whistles as the pelt flags strung between the buildings fluttered in time, casting dancing shadows over the herb gardens in the protected courtyard and the holly and ivy grown tangled around the barbed-wire perimeter fence; all fertilized by the unicorn bone meal.

The Shoed Unicorn was built of rowan and ash and river rocks, and the iron barbed-wire fence was supported with living blackthorn on the prairie side and willow on the river side. The grounds of the fortification were never quiet- the flags flapping, the trees rustling, the pipes playing, the river running, and the clinking of charms on the perimeter fence- iron, silver, bronze, unicorn bone, dragon scale, amber, hematite, and quartz.

The medley of sound was a blessing for the river travelers and merchants who took safety in speed and the magical protection of running water and the stragglers of prairie caravans who fell behind, or became last survivors. The song of The Shoed Unicorn was safety- and, for some, home.

* * *

As Gatemaster, Lovino was on duty when the barge anchored on the shore, and he and its occupants had their customary argument when they disembarked.

“I’m your _brother!”_

“And you might be _magicked!_ There’s no damn way for me to tell unless you use the salt baths!”

_“I’m still wearing Nonno’s unicorn charm!”_ Feliciano screamed back up and brandished his unicorn horn cornuta amulet, still on the iron chain around his neck, at his eldest brother standing in the window of the gatehouse. _“Could I do that if I was cursed!”_

" _There’s some sneaky shit out there!”_

_“Damnit Lovino I’ve been on the river for six months **I want to see everyone!** ”_

_“Well you can do it after you take a salt bath just like **everyone else,** MR. TRADEMASTER!”_

Feliciano grumbled the whole way through, but he went through the process like he always did.

“Now that wasn’t so damn hard, was it?”

* * *

Sebastian was Scoutmaster and had exactly one mission in life; and that was _to hunt._

He snuck through the prairie grass in near silence, unicorn pelt cape covering his back, shoulders, and head.

Sebastian hunted to keep The Shoed Unicorn safe. To keep his family safe.

He was just old enough to remember the day the unicorn herd had come through the broken defenses, that day after the tornado. He remembered seeing Theudericks gored and Marcus run towards him screaming in rage, Eydís hot on his heels, Roswitha trying to lay protections and Hartwin hiding the children as well he could. Sebastian remembered clinging to an infant Liesl in the loft of the stables under the drying racks for the wood, Lovino herding his younger brothers further towards the wall and Roderich and François desperately trying to keep baby Ludwig quiet, Vespasiana and Santiana and Berwald and his brothers and Drazhan armed with the beginnings of partially-forged swords, crouched next to the drying racks where they could see the stable doors.

He remembered hearing, but not seeing, as Roswitha slammed the doors open and shoved Luitgard, clutching Arthur, up the ladder. The unicorns had come then, trampling the rest of Roswitha’s children under their cloven hooves and stabbing them on their horns as she screamed and lit them afire with a yew-twig bundle; and then Gilbert had screamed as a unicorn gored him and Roswitha, half-mad with grief, broke the unicorn’s neck and then tore its horn from its skull and pried the blood red carbuncle from its slot in the skull and handed it to him.

They’d rebuilt, after that, and held a funeral that lasted for days and a burnt gash in the prairie from the pyres. Old Eydís, crippled from defending her dead younger brother, took his place as Forgemaster. Roswitha stayed at The Shoed Unicorn to be Tavernmaster and child-raiser while Hartwin took Marcus’s place as Trademaster on the river; and slowly, they re-established themselves as safe and reputable.

And Sebastian had seen the carnage and helped repair the fence and learned about the terrors on the prairie- the unicorns come down from the mountains and the cockatrices after the rains; the undead in the night; the dragons and griffins in the skies; the gnomes and kobolds in the ground; the mermaids and keplies in the river and so, so many more; too many to count.

So Sebastian hunted them, scavenging their corpses for supplies and finding their hiding places, so he could return with numbers and destroy the monsters in the grass.

* * *

Everybody knew everybody in The Shoed Unicorn. It was hard not too- it was very much a family establishment, and everyone had spent that night together, years ago, in the barn, listening to the unicorns extract their revenge.

“So Dagrún had a kid,” Gilbert said conversationally while he stabled François’s horse. He was Stablemaster- it was the only job he could have. The horses loved him, and his encounter with the unicorns so many years ago had changed him. He was colored like them now, white hair and skin and red eyes. It hurt him to go outside and hear the protective song of the wind pipes, and he wore gloves constantly to keep from touching iron on accident. The traders who came through called him The Unicorn’s Revenge, and he reveled in it so he couldn’t hate it.

Luitgard and Cristoforo just called him insufferable, but they all stayed together anyway.

“Dagrún _what?_ ” François asked in astonishment. “With _who?_ ”

“Drazhan. She’s calling the kid Yekateryna, and I’m pretty sure she’s got another one in the works right now.”

François just stared.

“Drazhan is her _father’s_ age,” he finally said.

“Hey, did I _say_ Berwald was happy about it? She’s barely sixteen. He nearly locked Drazhan out of the compound when he found out; and Timo had to remind him that the same thing would happen to him if he did.”

“Gah,” François said. “Why do I keep coming back?”

“Because we’re way more awesome than any of those petty kingships you keep fleeing from.”

* * *

Everybody who could spare some time from whatever they were doing, and quite a few who couldn’t, turned out at The Shoed Unicorn (the tavern) to see what the Trademaster’s journey had brought in.

Ludwig barged in the front door, still with blackthorn ash smudged on his clothes and his leather blacksmith’s apron and gloves on.

“We’ve got iron-” Arthur started to say, but Sancha used the intuition of her status as Deputy Trademaster and waved Ludwig towards the back of the tavern before getting back to making Antonio and Falco to _set things up properly._

 Liesl, the Tavernmaster, intercepted him before he caused chaos by intruding on the kitchen and sent him upstairs to the meeting room.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Feliciano murmured to him when he arrived and swept the smaller man off the floor in a desperate embrace. “I’m fine.”

Ludwig kissed him again and put him back on the ground.

“I just wish there was some way to know you were all right,” he said quietly, holding him close. “I never know if you’re coming back until you do.”

Feliciano smiled into Ludwig’s chest and thought about the courtship present he’d brought back.

They both jumped when the door to meeting room opened.

“Are we having a council meeting?” Feliciano asked uncertainly, pulling away from Ludwig reluctantly and watching as the rest of the council members came in.

“It’s a secret one,” Cristoforo said. He was Herbalist. “For now.”

Ludwig frowned and counted heads- Scoutmaster, Trademaster, Tavernmaster, Forgemaster, Stablemaster, Gatemaster, Herbalist-

“What emergency could we possibly have?” he finally asked.

“Supply shortage,” Cristoforo continued. “And an opportunity.”

“Unicorns,” Gilbert said shortly.

* * *

Cristoforo told a tale that was sobering in its implications- The Shoed Unicorn was down the last dregs of their unicorn byproducts, carefully managed throughout the years to make them last as long as possible. They could all remember a time when the corpses of the unicorns killed in the attack on the compound had seemed enough to last a lifetime.

“We can’t afford to run out,” Cristoforo said fiercely. “The bone meal keeps the vitality of our protective plants, and boosts the effectiveness of our medicinals. The flags must be kept in condition, and charms and pipes re-carved as they crack.”

“François came back today,” Gilbert added later. “Said there’s a small herd of unicorns- stallion and three or four mares, a foal or two- half a day’s ride out. Stallion’s old, probably had the rest of the herd stolen when some younger one came along and drove them out of the mountains.”

“I could shoe them,” Ludwig offered when everyone had stopped talking; which promptly broke everyone into nearly-shouts.

Countless _‘Don’t you know what happened last time’_ s and _‘Do you want to end up like your father’_ s and _‘You’ll be a target for unicorns until the day you die and even then they’ll attack your ashes’_ s later, Feliciano turned towards him quietly and said:

“I don’t want to lose you.”

He replied with: “I don’t want to lose our home,” and everyone shut up.

* * *

The hunting party was scheduled to go out the next morning. Ludwig had the iron and portable forge packed- they wouldn’t bring the unicorns to the compound to shoe. They would be shod out on the prairie, where if anything went wrong, it wouldn’t happen around everyone else.

 “You worry me too, you know,” Feliciano told him in the darkness, snuggling closer in bed. He wouldn’t be going with the hunting party tomorrow like Ludwig and Gilbert.

“I have to, Feli. We know hunts don’t survive in the mountains.”

“I don’t want to have to burn your body in the pyre field, Ludwig. If I have to do that I’ll go in the river and never come back out.”

Ludwig stroked his hair, chest tightening.

“No, Feli. Don’t become a rusalka over me.”

“Wouldn’t,” he mumbled, clutching at Ludwig. “Too much protection magic for my spirit to stay.”

“Still. Don’t.”

They stayed in silence before Feliciano shifted far enough off the bed to rummage in the bag he’d left on the floor.

“Here,” he said, pressing a necklace into Ludwig’s hand. Ludwig felt it in the darkness, running his thumb over the round beads.

“It’s pearl,” Feliciano told him. “I have one and you have one. If something happens to mine, then I know you’re…”

It was hard to say.

“…dead. And if something happens to yours, then it’s me. So we know.”

* * *

It took the hunting party until mid-morning to find the unicorns, and until midday to trap them. They had ropes woven of hemp and iron wire- not the most flexible, but effective. They drove the unicorns with iron and holly torches against the river, downstream of The Shoed Unicorn.

Then Ludwig got off his horse and set up the forge.

In his brother’s gatehouse, upstream, Feliciano heard the unicorns screaming and shivered, fingering the pearls.

The hunting party returned in late evening, shadows chasing their heels and the unicorns fighting every step of the way against the cold iron on their hooves and around their necks and in their tack. The party tethered them inside a new ring of barbed wire and willow and yew, tied to a blackthorn tree, before coming inside.

Cristoforo was sent off with the carcass of the younger, female foal who’d been caught by one of their horses’ hooves for its skinning and curing and deboning. Sebastian joined Lovino on the wall and Gilbert went back to the stables, unable to shake off the uneasy feeling of kinship he’d felt to the screams and the raw nerves of being around cold iron all day. The horses would calm him.

Ludwig and Feliciano held each other in the main courtyard until the stars came out.


End file.
